Quisling: The Final Days

8 May 1945, the occupation of Norway ends. Vidkun Quisling is arrested. He headed the government that collaborated with the German administration during the war and his name became a synonym for treason in his country. He waits to be tried. A pastor comes to the prison; his duty is to speak with the prisoner. The pastor's wife lost family because of decisions Quisling signed during the war. The two men talk for months. Quisling regrets nothing and considers himself misunderstood. Erik Poppe directs. Gard B. Eidsvold plays Quisling and Anders Danielsen Lie the pastor. It is a Norwegian production. The process behind the narrative is real: Quisling was tried and executed at the end of 1945. The matter the film builds is not forgiveness but the limit of trying to understand; the pastor is caught between his duty and his own anger. The narrative does not humanise Quisling, and does not show him as a simple villain either; the man is consistent within his own logic, and that is the most uncomfortable thing about the film. The setting is almost entirely the prison; the country outside is given only through sounds and news. Poppe had taken up difficult events in Norway's recent history before, and this film belongs to that line. Its limit is pace; the structure rests on talk and turns heavy over long stretches. Who it is for: viewers who like historical trial drama and Scandinavian cinema. Who it is not for: little happens, the film consists largely of two men talking, and the subject is heavy.